


Over Beers and Brandy

by magistrate



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Character Study, Gen, gender theory, samantha carter hates her life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-08
Updated: 2011-09-08
Packaged: 2017-10-23 13:16:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magistrate/pseuds/magistrate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: "Jack, Sam. Yet another mysogynistic planet."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Over Beers and Brandy

The conference had been good. Honestly. Really, Sam found it hard to imagine the Air Force Association's Air & Space Conference and Technology Expo being a bust even without being asked to speak on future technologies; add in a good half-hour lecture and fifteen minutes of open forum and she was all but guaranteed to be buzzing for the rest of the day.

Besides, Sam always had a twinge of nostalgia when she visited the DC area, even if the nostalgia came with a somewhat keener sense of displacement and the odd existential twinge – because while the rest of the galaxy was going through one upheaval after another, Apophis swallowing territories like the serpent myth he emulated, the capital of the United States remained perpetually the same.

Then again, it was a mark of pride, in some ways. There was good old-fashioned Americana and American history to these streets, these buildings. This bar. _Especially_ this bar, which Colonel O'Neill was ushering her into, which was furnished in hardwood and brick and what looked suspiciously like gas lamps.

 _Well,_ she thought. Try as he might to pass himself off as lowbrow, the Colonel did seem to have notes of class.

"There are how many bars in the DC area, and you couldn't find one with a pool table?"

"I thought we'd try not getting kicked out, this evening," he said, letting the door swing shut after them.

"Sir, the only time I've ever been kicked out of a bar after a game of pool was also after you threw someone across a room."

A smile crossed the Colonel's face. "Good times," he said, and swept a hand out toward the bar. She preceded him over and took a seat, and Colonel O'Neill caught the attention of a bartender as he took the chair to her left. "I'll take a pint of whatever lager you'd recommend, and she'll have a–?"

"Red Dog. Thank you."

The Colonel quirked an eyebrow. "Surprisingly trendy, Carter."

"Advertised outside," Sam said. The Colonel made a disappointed noise.

"And here I thought you were developing taste."

 _Says the person whose definition of good beer is whatever's on sale at the gas station,_ she thought. "I have taste!"

"Uh-huh," the Colonel said, and she caught herself. Okay, that had been obvious as a setup from the moment just _after_ she'd fallen for it. "You realize you're going to have to prove that sometime. You know, fishing trips and team barbecues provide ample opportunity."

If he'd been her father, she'd have punched him in the arm. Unfortunately – or really, truly, _spectacularly_ fortunately – he wasn't.

She was saved by the arrival of the bartender, setting down their drinks – a pint for him and a bottle for her – with a cheerful "Here you go," and by the time the Colonel had waved him off, Sam was ready.

"So I noticed the argument between you and Vanderbilt hasn't died off yet."

The Colonel groaned. "Vanderbilt is getting too much mileage out of the fact that I came out of retirement to look at radar data in a mountain in Colorado," he said. "Because he's booking time on a Very Large Array of something somewhere in Arizona."

"New Mexico," Sam corrected. "Outside of Magdalenda. It's–"

The Colonel shot her a glance, and she stopped explaining.

"Sorry."

" _Anyway_ ," the Colonel said, "he points out that we don't even have a radio telescope. Apparently he's checked. I considered calling Hammond and asking him to install one on top of the mountain just to shut him up. What sort of overhead would we be talking, getting an array of our own, anyway?"

Sam raised her eyebrows. "Do you actually want me to answer that?"

The Colonel considered for a moment before admitting, "No."

He sighed over his lager.

"He also said he knew a guy who could get me much better hours working for NASA," he said, and drank.

Sam sighed, too. "That sounds familiar."

"I don't suppose we could just put out a note, could we? 'Attention, everyone else: the staff of the Cheyenne Mountain facility are not interested in working for NASA. Yes, we're sure. Thank you for offering.' Circulate widely."

She chuckled. "Somehow, I don't think that would work, sir."

The soft _schutchle_ of a chair being pulled back from a table was lost in the general noise, as were the first two or three steps someone took toward them. Even the appearance of another man at the bar – or almost at the bar, hanging back by a couple of feet – would have faded into the background if he hadn't cleared his throat. Both of them looked over.

He was a man, maybe 5'7 in Sam's estimation, with balding brown hair and a mustache she had a hard time believing had been in style since the 20s. He was slightly flushed, which Sam took to mean slightly drunk, and fixing the Colonel with a somewhat-too-intense stare.

"Ye...es?" the Colonel asked.

"You're a military man, aren't you?"

Sam blinked, reviewed the last few minutes in her head to see what could have tipped the man off, and felt a twinge of embarrassment when she realized it had probably been the _sir_. The Colonel tried so hard to look harmless and inoffensive when offduty. It felt like blowing his cover. Possibly she should think of a way to rescue him, though none were coming to mind.

"That wouldn't be a problem, would it?" the Colonel asked. His voice was light and cautious, testing the waters and hoping the guy wouldn't start anything. They could both smell the alcohol on his breath; idly, Sam wondered if there was a story tying his alcohol and his interest in them together. Kid or a friend overseas somewhere, maybe. Or maybe the guy had an ideological bone to pick and was looking for a fight.

The guy made a noise back his throat, gave a few watery blinks, and stuck his hand out. "I just wanted to say how much I admire the men of our armed forces," he said, and it was at that moment that Sam decided her time could be better spent turning back to the bar and ordering a cognac. Part of her was dryly amused – for a moment, she could _hear_ Colonel O'Neill recognizing just how much his new friend had jammed his foot in his mouth – but she had a feeling she'd get more relief from the brandy.

"Thank... you," the Colonel said, and probably cast Sam a sidelong glance, but she was too busy ignoring the hell out of that conversation to look back and see. She was peripherally aware of the Colonel shaking the guy's hand, of the guy hanging on a beat too long.

"You live in the area?"

"Oh. No. No, we're just in for business," he said, with a slight emphasis on the _we_ that passed clear over the civilian's head.

"Well, I'll leave you to it then, sir," he said, and threw off a sloppy and somewhat tipsy salute before meandering back to his table and beer. The Colonel watched him go, then turned back to the bar with a quiet whistle and a remark pitched not to carry.

"Okay. Well. That guy, huh?"

Sam raised her eyebrows. "Careful, Colonel. You're getting a fan club."

"I don't _want_ a fan club," he said, and his expression scrunched up around his eyes. "I'd have to housetrain them."

"...that's dogs, sir."

He mouthed _Ah_ , and said "Right." That was accompanied by a vague gesture, played close to his chest, indicating the table behind them. "Still."

"I dunno," Sam said. "He's probably a perfectly nice person, aside from the overwhelming cluelessness."

Colonel O'Neill tilted his head. "Carter, do I hear you defending that man?"

Sam snorted. She had an odd moment of double vision – sometimes she swore she could see the universes branching off from each other, splitting into fractals of infinite complexity, oscillating in that _moment_ when a choice could or could not be made, Schrödinger's cat be both alive and dead (or the Tollan had and had not brushed that entire branch of physics aside). She could hear herself saying the words she'd intended to say: _Not at all, Colonel. I called him clueless._ She could hear those words tumbling off in a direction no human-mind-based language had ever named, nudging their own causality out of her way and out of her experiential timeline forever.

What she actually said, in the universe her consciousness hewed to, was, "No, sir, I was quitting the field."

It was the wrong answer. The correct answer, drilled into her time and time again, was to share a laugh about how quaint but ultimately harmless the man had been, acknowledge that no, certainly, Colonel O'Neill was nothing like that: after all, he'd sensed the awkwardness gathering around them, hadn't he?, and to change the topic to something more palatable like what sort of joke gifts they were going to bring Daniel from the Smithsonian. The pointed _quitting the field_ didn't belong in the conversation. For one thing, it could make someone think there was a battle going on.

"Excuse me?" the Colonel said, after a moment's pause.

Sam sighed. She honestly hadn't wanted to get into this tonight; the cognac had been such a nice distraction when no one had been speaking directly to her. She waved it off. "Never mind."

"Carter," Colonel O'Neill said, in the way he had that said he _could_ start throwing orders around at any time, but was kinda hoping they could keep things friendly.

"I mean it," she said, with a shrug. "He's probably a perfectly nice person. Most people just don't think about what they're saying." _And I'm tired_ , she didn't say, because it hadn't been that long a day.

"Still, I've never known you not to put someone like that in their place," the Colonel said, and the half a mouthful of cognac that _had_ been on its way toward Sam's throat found itself spewed right back into the glass. The Colonel jerked back as though her eyes would glow next and half the bar looked her way. After a few moments, the bargoers decided that was all the entertainment she'd be offering, and went back to their conversations. Colonel O'Neill said "Okay, now I've said something funny."

 _So enlighten me_ was the clear end to that sentiment.

"All due respect, Colonel," she said, once she was sure none of the alcohol had made it into her windpipe, "but I _don't correct people_ all the time."

A beat passed. "Really?"

"Yes. Really," she said.

Another beat. "Why not?"

"Because it would be a full-time job with no time off for evenings or weekends," she said. "And I already have one of those." She took a drink from her cognac.

The Colonel snorted. "You have time off for evenings and weekends," he said. "You just don't take it. Besides, how many clueless people could you possibly run into in a typical day?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Do you actually want me to answer _that_?"

"Try me," he said.

She gave him a moment to rescind the offer before taking a deep breath and saying "Oookay." Starting from the beginning. "Well, starting with the catcalls from riding in this morning?" Granted, there was always a certain element of showmanship to taking a motorcycle anywhere, but the sheer predictability of the attention she got was one of the many reasons she was more likely to take her bike out on I-25 than the city streets. "The baggage handler asked how many pairs of shoes I had in my luggage." They'd been _books_. "Someone in O'Hare actually started using the 'that uniform looks good on you' line on me," _(but it'd look even better on my bedroom floor)_ , "I _swear_ our driver was singing along to 'Just Like A Woman,' which, if you ask me, was not one of Bob Dylan's better songs, musically _or_ lyrically; the waiter at lunch looked at me when he asked if we wanted a salad to start and _you_ when he asked if we were ready to order, and then..."

She trailed off, because the Colonel was beginning to get that _I can't believe you notice and **remember** all this stuff_ look. Well, he'd asked. And she was just going to shut up now.

He turned back to his drink and said, "I'm starting to think I've been singled out for special treatment, here," in a tone that said it was a joke. That was actually a relief, because the other way this conversation typically went was the carefully-implied _How petty do you have to be, to call all this up at the drop of a hat?_ , and she'd been trying to avoid the _Hey, don't be like that, it's no big deal_ thing when she ignored the _men of our armed forces_ line in the first place. Let Colonel O'Neill make the conversation about him. It was a lot easier to deal with, sometimes. She shrugged.

"Well, sir, I have to work with you. I'm probably never going to see most of these people again."

Colonel O'Neill turned one hand palm-up, as though to ask _Really?_

"In the field, it doesn't annoy me as much," she allowed, and immediately reconsidered. "Okay, it annoys me more in some ways," especially when people tried to cut out her tongue or stuff her into dresses, "but I can understand it. If you've never heard Daniel go on his rant about the enforcement of strict patriarchy as a way to retard social and economic development..."

She glanced over. The Colonel was making a valiant effort to look less like he wanted to wince, when she did.

"Well, honestly, sir, I don't think you'd find that interesting at all," she said. He gave a soft, half-swallowed chuckle, like he wasn't sure whether that was something he was allowed to admit or not. "It's just that I can expect ignorance from people who have been living–" _Under the Goa'uld_ was slightly too classified to blurt out in the middle of a bar, so she said "in their circumstances" instead. "It's harder, in a society that's supposed to know better."

To his credit, it didn't look like the Colonel was looking for a way to backpedal out of the conversation as quickly as possible. He just considered it, and said, with grave conciliation, "Some of us do."

And Sam exhaled, and just didn't bring up Colonel O'Neill's offhand comment to Daniel a few days ago about getting her to tie his tie, or all the times he'd casually asked _What's his name?_ when someone mentioned a brilliant scientist or a diplomatic leader, or the time he dismissed a drink on some other world with _It's some girly punch thing_ , or anything. Every incident was always so small, unconscious, forgettable, except that every one of them jammed up like a splinter and lodged in her mind.

The thing was, after this many years – after he'd stood there and pinned an oak leaf to her shoulder and turned to her with confidence time and time again to find a way out of or through or around whatever problem they needed to deal with – she knew he respected her. She had no doubt. But she also knew that that respect included a filter; how, even in his mind, a thin line marked "respectable" had segregated her away from the vague notion of all the girly and feminine things that flounced across the world, and the people privileged enough to be penned in that little delineation were to his _gut_ still rarer than unicorns. It was, as Daniel would have pointed out, a fact of the culture they'd grown up in.

She just said "Yeah," and drank her beer.

The Colonel gave her cognac-a-la-spittake a sympathetic look, and waved someone over. "Can we get a fresh glass of whatever this was?" he asked, gesturing to the snifter.

She watched him add the new, saliva-free cognac to his tab, accepted the drink with a _Thanks_ , and cast around for a change of topic.

"Next bar," the Colonel said, pre-empting her. "I'll make sure they have a pool table. You can clean out the locals to your heart's content." He got a considering look on his face. "Any chance you could teach Daniel how to do that?"

Sam laughed despite herself. "What, with the big blue eyes and the glasses and the innocent look? If he was any good at pool, he'd be a natural."

"No one ever expects the archaeologist," the Colonel agreed, with a sidelong smile, and Sam raised the cognac.

"Or the girl. I'll drink to that."

"Cheers," the Colonel said.

She hid a smile in the snifter when she drank. Because Colonel O'Neill _was_ a good person, and she hadn't been lying when she said it was an honor serving under his command. He was a good person, a good CO, and a good friend, and she'd stand by any of those assertions. He was just a shade clueless. Like the rest of the world.

\- END -


End file.
